EYE-volution or Cr-EYE-tion?

Have you ever felt a gust of wind hit your eyes? Did you tear up afterwards? This is an amazing design feature of the body’s temperature system that protects your eyes. Could evolution have caused such a feature?

Located in the corneas of your eyes are thermoreceptors (thur-moh-ree-SEP-ters), which just happen to be able to check the temperature of the liquid in your eyes. They just happen to be able to send that temperature information to your hypothalamus (hi-po-THAL-uh-mus) in your brain. They send that information along special pathways that just happen to connect the thermoreceptors to the brain, called effector (ee-FECT-er) nerves. The brain just happens to be able to figure out what to do with that information. If the temperature is too cold, it just happens to decide to send a message back to the eyes to tell the tear ducts to make tears—warm liquid that will heat your eyes and protect them. That’s a lot of thinking, purpose, and decision making that had to come about by mindless evolution that just “happened,” don’t you think?

Do you think it makes sense that evolution could accidentally, all of a sudden one day, simultaneously develop the entire tear system, including the corneas, effector nerves, thermoreceptors, tear ducts, hypothalamus, and the ability of those objects to communicate with each other? Or does it seem more reasonable that those items were designed by an Engineer with a purpose in mind for those things when they were created?

Eyes are so amazing that engineers in Illinois studied them to figure out how they can see such a wide view with a single glance. Then they designed a special camera in the shape of the human eye. They discovered that by using the design of the eye for their camera, they were able to take wide-angle pictures without the image being messed up—just like the human eye can.

Now why would anyone design something based on an evolutionary accident? It makes more sense that designers designed this special camera because they saw an amazingdesign that they wanted to copy. And where there is design, there is always a designer. Truly, “the hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both” (Proverbs 20:12).

*Please keep in mind that Discovery articles are written for 3rd-6th graders.

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